This blog title is derived from a book based on a travel journal of William Morris, a British textile designer and icon of the Arts and Craft Movement during the 19th century. This journal encompasses his foray on horseback, across the volcanic desert plains of Iceland. It is a little blue book sized to fit within a jacket pocket. Morris’ words are composed on the right hand pages, while at the opposite is the wonderful commentary by the poet and novelist Livinia Greenlaw. Alongside Morris’ entries, she brings to the fore in so few words, the understated values of travel, the transformative nature of adventure, companionship, ensuing realisations, and the longing for the place known as home. I am quite fond of this little blue book. The content within I can attribute to inspiring me to write like I am now.
I have had an affinity for the Himalayas ever since I first glimpsed them in the fall of 2013. That map of endless snow-capped peaks. Humans do not belong in such inhospitable places (most humans anyway). Yet, in the challenge of traversing such wilderness lies the impulse to go forth and ascend. The calling to rise above and beyond worldly pursuits – even if for days only or weeks – is a powerful life-altering force. Before the era of hikers and mountaineers, it was primarily those on the spiritual path that found bliss and solitude in this atmosphere of thin air, radiant snows, and rocky terrain. I probably belong to a masala of both paths.
The writing that follows is a short eidetic account of mine while in Sikkim in the beginning of this year, a land in northeast India, wedged between Nepal, Bhutan, and China. It was an acute phenomenological experience that has lingered in my mind for some time. All accompanying imagery was captured before or after this short account.
We wade through two feet of snow down the slope of a mountain. The Himalayas sighs, exhaling an atmosphere of white mist so that we may not see a hundred yards ahead or behind. We are beset on all sides by the hostile environment that can never be tamed. A crystal land.
My right knee had sprained near the peak of our ascent the previous day. My body trudges grimly with a limp. The others have sped further ahead, far out of sight and reach of sound. I am as alone as the moon eclipsed.
I hear only the crushing of snow beneath my boots. Nothing else stirs. I realise in my solitude that I am weak, and this knowledge sprouts fear. In the fog of pain and exhaustion my mind becomes vulnerable to certain illusions, certainly exasperated by this strange, dormant part of the world. Where all is ice, twig, and stone. Black trunks, black branches, black stems. I, a silhouette amongst it all.
Home to the Himalayas are bears, wolves and leopards. The two black dogs acting as our companions may have sniffed out a bear the day before while at a checkpoint, according to our guide. Hard to confirm through all that fog and eerie silence. I feel instinctively however, that there is nothing to fear but that which lurks in my mind. I feel a burning in my chest – it is familiar – that only one thing I know can enkindle.
I see phantoms. No, a phantom. A cloud. Greeting me at each turn of the mountain path, only to vanish and appear again. I am given a non-threatening impression. No shred of darkness. Perhaps even a positive force. I do not think too hard about what this all means. I am still focusing on my feet. Being so weak it somehow makes sense to me what I am seeing. I acknowledge the phantom with my eyes, but not with words. What should one say to phantoms? My silences speaks enough.
It is clear my mind is being affected by my body’s fatigue and my alarmed nerves.* The fact that I am alone does not help. My fortitude ebbs away with each step dragging through the chilling snow. If it were not, I would not be so prey to the wilder side of my imagination. At this instance I do not care to offer resistance. So what if I go mad. It is likely one of the three ingredients of why I am here in the first place: courage… sacrifice… madness… Is there any better place to go mad than the Himalayas? No one to judge or care. Just I, with boots buried two feet in the snow.
The past echoes, the future calls. The interstice, the in-between, but a mindful dream. I miss nothing in the distant low plains, the coast, the cities. Barring one thing estranged to me – for it is no longer part of my world nor I of it. A fleeting scene.
This reverie occurs as I look upwards and towards the distance where there should be mighty mountains in view. Instead, I gaze upon the same myriad shadows within a blanket of misty white. I start to recall and recognise my proclivity to ignore pain and not carefully attend to my wounds, both physical and psychological. Not a good habit to keep carrying. A voice inside my head, belonging to the phantom more than I, instructs me to take proper care of myself. I absorb the message and oblige. Though I still heavily stumble down the mountain path rather than walk. A dash more pain before I am allowed to heal. The pain and the cold I find to be a strange juxtaposition. The cold numbs the senses; freezes the spirit. Yet pain pierces through this intangible ice, reminding you that you are alive.
Eventually, I do catch up with the others at the outskirts of an abandoned village. The snow quickly begins to dissipate after the first few dozen steps leading away from this empty place, as if it is a threshold between two realms. The air becomes less thin. I regain my fortitude. The dreamlike companion has departed. Now the path ahead is only pockets of shallow snow, slush, exposed rock and damp earth. I must be careful while stepping over the roots of a many great pine trees. We go forth, leaving winter behind us.
The path is the aim…
* Another strange encounter occurred the previous afternoon, as we were but half-an-hour away from our destination. The cause of my alarmed nerves. A near death experience. It was too bizarre and wild for me to take seriously at the time. Even now I find it difficult to convince myself that it happened.
About an hour after my knee injury occurred, I was lagging behind most of the others by a quarter of a mile. A boy of thirteen or fourteen, the ‘intern’, stayed within sight of me alongside Sputnik, one of two local indie dogs that accompanied us. An hour earlier we had passed a herd of wild yaks. An inconspicuous bunch, paying us no heed.
As I limply walked with the Himalayas in view, I suddenly heard the intern shout from the top of the ridge ahead of me. I could not make out at all what he was saying. But from the frantic movement of his hands it appeared to be a warning. I turn around. Just over a hundred feet away stood a yak on the path behind. A black mammoth of a body, with a white ghostlike face. I was dumbfounded but without fear. My friend Malcom had asked me earlier in the day what sound a yak makes. So there I was, paying attention to nothing but the yaks heavy breathing, as small white clouds billowed out of his nostrils. ‘Ah yeah, that’s what a yak sounds like…’ I thought to myself out loud, oblivious to what was to come. The yak charged.
Then came the fear. First I turned back around and attempted to run, yet obviously found it troublesome with a bum knee. But adrenaline makes you forget such inconveniences and so I ran anyway. For a second I thought I was shit out of luck. What a way to go. Gored by a yak. I could hear the yaks hooves stomping on stone and dirt, seconds away. I reach about fifty feet away from the intern, and I see him throw himself right into the thicket of the mountains incline (left of the path being a cliff-like depression). I do the same. I throw my body berserk into the black bushes and climb into where it was thickest. As I turn my head to confirm my safety or danger, Sputnik runs head on towards the yak, barking wildly with gallantry I have never witnessed from a human. In doing so the yak immediately halts and begins to back off with Sputnik in pursuit.
The yak is forced to a safe distance from us and so the intern and I hurry as fast as we can to reach the others. I do not believe the yak followed us, for I did not see it while I periodically glanced back to check. We manage to reach the others at our destination, a small wooden hut, which I perceived as a castle. I consider calling someone once I return from the mountains, since I just experienced a close call with death. Should I? Not close enough, I decide. I brush off the incident from my mind and concentrate on keeping my feet warm, while observing the odd purple glow of a sunset in the Himalayas.